Likelihood of Success

First published September 8, 2007.

Instapundit points to this extraordinary article in the Weekly Standard about the Nazi roots of Al Qaeda, by a German analyst:

What ideas propelled [9/11 plotter Mohammed] Atta and the others to act? . . . . One participant in the Koran circle meetings, Shahid Nickels, said Atta’s Weltanschauung was based on a “National Socialist way of thinking.” Atta was convinced that the Jews were striving for world domination and considered New York City the center of world Jewry, which was, in his opinion, Enemy No. 1. Fellow students who lived in Motassedeq’s dormitory testified that he shared these views and waxed enthusiastic about a forthcoming “big action.” One student quoted Motassedeq as saying, “The Jews will burn and in the end we will dance on their graves.”. . .

Amazingly, neither the American media nor the international press took much notice of this testimony, largely refusing to report on Atta’s and Motassedeq’s explicit Jew-hatred. [I]n this case, involving attackers of Arab background, journalists apparently found the issue irrelevant. . . .

[Similarly,] the 9/11 Commission Report is a case in point. Instead of discussing the fact that Jew-hatred had reached epidemic proportions in the Islamic world well before September 11, the report gives the impression that Islamism originally arose in response to recent American and Western policies. . . .

A struggle against Islamism waged in ignorance of Islamist ideology weakens the West. The attribution of guilt to Israel and the United States adds fuel to the flames of Islamist propaganda and drives the wedge deeper into the Western camp rather than where it belongs–in the Muslim world.

Such blindness is especially hazardous in the case of the Iranian nuclear program, whose danger arises from the unique ideological stew surrounding it: the mish-mash of Jew-hatred, Holocaust denial, and Shiite death-cult messianism that is the context for Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and advanced missiles.

What’s the explanation for this? I would posit a few possible ones:

• A completely misplaced desire to avoid offending Muslims, who of course should not be offended, if they are indeed moderate, by accurate descriptions of their extremist brethren
• A similarly misplaced, though relatively benign, desire to avoid, ironically, “blaming” the Jews for “bringing” this attack “on” America — as if to report this twisted, and objectively preposterous rationale would be to vindicate it
• A left-wing desire to urge as “root causes” of extremist violence Western policies that are conveniently the opposite of their preferred policy prescriptions, coupled with the fact that describing deep-seated Arab antisemitism as a motivation would undermine those very preferred policies (e.g., more pressure to produce Israeli “concessions” from their friendly neighbors who supposedly desire only to live in peace with the their Jew neighbors)

Mix and match, or suggest your own. But don’t expect to read about this in the New York Times.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, across the Pond…